When Chris Wallace replaced Tony Snow as the host of “Fox News Sunday” in December 2003, the network appeared to take a more moderate approach to Sunday talk.

Unlike Snow, a former Republican speechwriter, Wallace’s broadcasting résumé included nearly three decades at mainstream media staples ABC and NBC.

And Wallace even snagged Howard Dean — who hadn’t been on the Fox network in five years — as his first guest; fellow presidential hopefuls John F. Kerry, Dick Gephardt and John Edwards rounded out the month.

But this election cycle, said Wallace, some Democrats aren’t “playing ball” with him — or with Fox News.

On a recent Sunday morning, shortly after refereeing a debate between Karl Rove and Democratic Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, Wallace talked to Politico about the Democrats’ lack of appearances on Fox News, the “liberal bias” at competing networks and how November’s television ratings prove that while his show remains in fourth place nationwide, it’s on the upswing in Washington.

For Sunday talk shows, thriving in the D.C. ratings — although clearly trumped in size by New York — provides bragging rights over which show reaches more political insiders.

But more importantly, since the Sunday shows’ objective is not only to reflect on the past week’s events but to get political leaders to break news and move the conversation forward in the newspapers and the blogosphere on Monday morning, it’s essential for both leading Republicans and leading Democrats to reach members of D.C.’s chattering class.

“I think the Democrats are damn fools [for] not coming on Fox News,” Wallace said. “And my guess is that once you get a nominee, they probably will come on, because they know that we get a lot of voters they are going to need if they are going to win the election.”

So far, Wallace has interviewed Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson; both Sen. Barack Obama and former North Carolina Sen. Edwards have declined.

The Edwards campaign confirmed that the candidate declined but did not elaborate further. The Obama campaign did not respond to requests seeking comment.

Aside from his hourlong Sunday show, the Democratic candidates will not participate in any Fox News-sponsored debates, leaving Wallace to moderate three Republican contests over the course of 2007.

“Just imagine if the Republicans, under pressure from right-to-life groups, refused to appear on CNN or MSNBC,” Wallace said.

“I think there would be holy unshirted hell. I think there would be such talk about these people being captives of the extreme right wing and why are they afraid to answer questions. And I think the absence of that is very telling.

“At this point, it has become kind of a loyalty test inside the Democratic Party, ... pandering to the far-left-wing,” Wallace added. “And we live with it.”

Despite missing some candidates from the other side of the aisle, Wallace — along with the Fox public relations team — will happily boast that in the D.C. market, there have been big gains.

That’s been evident in the past month as influential media blogs like FishbowlDC and TVNewser seized upon the November ratings — the latter declaring in a headline “Washington Likes Wallace.”

“I think we’re doing a variety of things to distinguish ourselves from the other shows, and Washington, especially, seems to be noticing the difference,” Wallace said.

Indeed, the ratings have improved lately for Wallace in the D.C. market. In November, “Fox News Sunday” beat both ABC’s “This Week” and CBS’s “Face the Nation” each Sunday, while even once topping NBC’s “Meet the Press” — perhaps still recovering from all its 60th-anniversary hoopla.

Representatives for “Meet the Press” and “Face the Nation”were contacted but did not comment.

A representative for ABC’s Sunday show responded: “Season to date, ‘This Week’ posted increases in both total viewers and the [key demographic], while the competition was down in both categories. Year to date, ‘This Week’ is the only Sunday discussion program to increase in total viewers while, again, the competition is down.”

The representative added that the George Stephanopoulos-hosted show is “consistently No. 1 or 2 in eight of the top 10 metered markets and nationally places a strong second behind ‘Meet the Press.’”

And this past week, according to ratings information provided by NBC and ABC, “Fox News Sunday” fell to fourth in D.C., ending the winning streak against “This Week” and “Face the Nation.”

Nevertheless, Wallace’s overall tenure has shown increased competition with the three more established programs in Washington, according to data provided by Nielsen Media Research.

In November 2003, the month before he took over, “Fox News Sunday” beat “This Week” and “Face the Nation” only once in D.C. and never came close to “Meet the Press.”

But isolating one market can get tricky. Andrew Tyndall, an independent television news analyst, noticed increased attention recently being paid to Wallace’s D.C. numbers.

“This Week” and “Face the Nation” finished stronger, too, with about 2.9 million and 2.56 million viewers, respectively.

Nevertheless, Wallace, with his trademark smirk, remained upbeat while acknowledging that “it takes a while” to compete with “Meet the Press” — which he briefly moderated in the 1980s — and the other shows nationwide.

“Changing habits, particularly on something like Sunday morning, which is such a habit for people, is hard,” Wallace said.

“People are used to getting up and watching the Sunday show they’ve watched their whole lives. So you have to get people to change. The only way to do that is by having a more interesting show, breaking more news, by doing things the other shows don’t do.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was updated on Dec. 11 to correct the Dec. 2 viewership of CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Wallace said the spirited debate between Rove and Van Hollen, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, was something the other programs are not doing.

“I think there was a passion and an excitement and an energy there that you don’t get with doing the 14th interview with some senator or presidential candidate,” Wallace said.

(It should be noted that Wallace interviewed presidential candidates Mike Huckabee and Sen. John McCain the following week.)

While Wallace admitted that the “meat and potatoes” of “Fox News Sunday” will always be politics, a new segment called “American Leaders” premiered last month, which veers away from the campaign horse race.

When George H.W. Bush appeared in early November to discuss public service, Wallace said that “for the first time in the history of the show, we beat everybody in Washington.”

Also, Wallace is quick to highlight the show’s effect on steering the political conversation, mentioning how Rudy Giuliani aide Anthony Carbonetti called him the previous night to “explain what that whole funding mishap was about.”

And whether there is some exact science to this or not, Wallace contended that “Fox News Sunday” has “had more mentions in the national newspapers” than any other talk show last year, and so far this year.

Last year’s biggest mention was certainly his interview with Bill Clinton in September 2006, in which the former president accused Wallace of doing a “conservative hit job” at the request of Fox News brass.

There is a photograph from that much-talked-about Clinton interview on his office wall, alongside two other framed shots — Wallace standing next to Russian President Vladimir Putin in one and next to President Bush in the other.

Regarding the Clinton slugfest — which became a YouTube staple — Wallace said the story was not that he asked why the former president did not “do more to get [Osama] bin Laden and Al Qaeda out of business” but “that none of my competitors in the mainstream media asked him that question.”

Being the son of legendary newsman Mike Wallace, and in broadcast news for several decades, the Fox host has definitely been able to observe the mainstream media up close for quite some time.

But on his four-year anniversary this week, Wallace said there is something he’s discovered only since joining the Rupert Murdoch-owned network.

“I used to laugh and dismiss this talk about how we were — that there was a liberal bias in the mainstream media,” Wallace said. “But I have to say in the four years I’ve been at Fox, I’ve come to believe that there is a bias.”